We’re pleased to announce that we now have a regular column in Lab Times, the bimonthly magazine for European life scientists.

The topic of our first piece is one that we hope resonates with Retraction Watch readers. Drawing on our experience chasing down retraction notices, we call for all such notices — as well as all corrections — to be open access:

In the coming months, we’ll be introducing a set of icons that will alert Retraction Watch readers as to whether a retraction notice is freely available, or only available to subscribers. Our hope is that it will goad publishers do to the right thing.

We could use your help in this campaign, as neither of us is a particularly good artist. Come up with some icons, and earn fame and fortune, along with our undying gratitude.

Let us know what you think of the whole column, including the irony behind a study about Harvey Cushing’s “open and thorough documentation of surgical mistakes at the dawn of neurologic surgery” that — you guessed it — isn’t open access.